CALAMITY HOWLER/A.V. Krebs

21st-Century Populist Declaration of Independence

"Patriots who believe in the rights, wisdom or virtues of the
Common People"

WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS it becomes necessary for We the
People to dissolve the political bonds which have connected us with
another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate
and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
entitled us, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires
that the People should declare the causes which impel us to that
separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women
are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights Governments -- of
the people, by the people and for the people -- are instituted by the
people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed.

Whenever that Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its power in such form as the people shall seem most
likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Whenever a long train of abuses and usurpations are designed to
reduce us to an absolute Oligarchy, it is Our right, it is Our duty,
to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for our
future security.

Our nation is in a crisis. Our Constitution is being trashed, our
infrastructure is crumbling, the education of our young neglected,
the environment trashed, the lives of young men and women are being
wasted in an illegal war, and the welfare of our veterans jettisoned.
We are creating enemies all over the world while Our government is
using fear to stay in power, enriching itself at the expense of
present and future generations.

We live in a society where our government seeks to impose upon
its people an economic, social, political and ecological order
designed, not to serve the People, but rather one that is
self-serving and monopolistic in character, and which has created a
gigantic Military-Industrial-Congressional complex that permeates our
entire social, economic and ecological environment.

Such has been the patient sufferance of the farming, working and
producing classes in our nation's rural and urban communities, and
such is now the necessity which compels us to declare that we will
use every moral and democratic means, save a resort to violence, to
overthrow our fascist despotism and to insure that the common good is
served by adherence to the ideal of "equal justice under law."

THE HISTORY OF THE MODERN CORPORATE STATE has become a history of
repeated injuries and oppressions, all directed to establishing the
impersonal as the dominant institution within our society. The
corporate state has carefully schemed to protect and insure its
privileges and powers. It has successfully managed to protect its
interests by cloaking itself as a "person" within the language of the
14th Amendment of the Constitution, while at the same time
manipulating that Document and its Bill of Rights to its own selfish
ends.

By establishing "economic growth by means of corporate
priorities, corporate elites and banking elites, not simply having a
disproportionate amount of power and influence," have acquired at the
same time "such power and influence rarely being part of public
discussion" such that the public "can question it and interrogate in
a concrete way."

By successfully coercing politicians, in the name of corporate
socialism, it has established a huge corporate welfare system
composed of billions of dollars in tax abatements, tax preferences,
grants, inflated contracts, bailouts and a never-ending number of
subsidies to industries and corporate agribusiness.

By promoting its own selfish financial interests it has pitted
workers against workers, race against race, national-born citizens
against immigrants, cultures against cultures, men against women,
young against old, class against class.

By using such empty promises such as "greater productivity,"
"cost management" and "efficiency," it has endangered the health,
safety, and economic livelihood of thousands of our workers and
family farmers while its executive's have remunerated themselves well
beyond reason and equitable standards.

By creating an extravagant and wasteful
Military-Industrial-Congressional complex, of dubious value in
protecting the people from terrorism, and endangering our national
security, it has deprived Our nation of the necessary funding for
important domestic programs and infrastructural needs -- such as
universal health care and a challenging public education system,
essential to our survival as a nation.

By misleading its own people into believing that we have not only
the right but the obligation to be an imperial nation in a
multi-cultural, multi-religious world, it has enabled thousands of
parasites, "the gamblers in the necessities of Life", to use such
wars and the threat of threat of such wars for the purpose of
exacting exorbitant profits working not to beat an enemy, but to
create more billionaires.

By using bribery, "political action campaign" money and
honoraria, primarily designed to unduly influence and favor our law
makers, it repeatedly has betrayed the true interests of the People
to the degree that we now have one ruling political party beholden to
the same corporate paymasters.

WE THE PEOPLE, therefore, aspiring to live in a truly democratic
republic, assembled and conscious of our Populist tradition appeal to
the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,
do solemnly declare that we will use not only all lawful and
peaceable means to free ourselves from the tyranny of the corporatist
state and its monopolistic ideology, but will create a Populist
movement designed to humanize Democracy.

Reflecting on recent history one can justifiably measure the
success of the late 19th-century "Populist Revolt" by the manner in
which corporate America subsequently reacted so viscerally in the
century that followed, for the hallmark of that "revolt" was that
both family farmers and industrial workers defiantly proclaimed that
one cannot have political democracy without economic democracy.

While economic democracy was a stated goal, as members of the
Farm Alliance stated in their Omaha Platform of 1892, it also
represented a rebellion against the American political party system
of that day. In order to restructure the nation's financial and
political structure, the Populist revolt came to reject both major
political parties, which it accused of being in "harmony with
monopoly."

If populists in alliance are to replace today's corporatist
culture, we must adopt an ideological framework built on aggressive
advocacy and create a "movement culture." Such a populism must be
characterized by an evolving democratic culture in which people can
see themselves working together and aspiring to a society conducive
to mass human dignity.

We must also recognize clearly the imminent dangers of the
"corporatist" culture and educate and work together to bring that
corporate state under democratic control.

Thus, rather than isolate and concentrate on a myriad of issues,
modern populism must focus on the system, for the system has become
the issue. In proceeding to build the "sequential process of
democratic movement-building" we can learn valuable lessons from our
Populist ancestors.

We must develop horizontal communication between groups of
Populist-oriented people and individuals both within our own
communities and nations and then advance an effort to build an
international populism. By teaching each other what each of us learns
and knows and what mistakes we have made -- we can develop what can
be described as "movement forming." In developing such a system of
communication we also create a forum and environment whereby we can
continue to attract masses of people -- "the movement
recruiting."

Keeping in mind a commitment to the creative nonviolence and the
democratic process, and remembering that Populism seeks to replace
corporate power with democratic power, We can begin a culturally
unsanctioned level of social analysis -- "the movement
education."

Finally, 21st-century populists, in alliance, can create an
institutional means -- not by forming another political party --
where new ideas, shared now by the rank-and-file of a mass political,
social and cultural movement, can be expressed in an autonomous
political way --- "the movement politicized."

WE THE PEOPLE MUST ACT NOW. We may not achieve all our objectives
but we must constantly strive toward doing so. We owe it to our
children and to their children. We must join forces and arouse the
heretofore silent majority. If we stand together on mutually accepted
moral and democratic principles, we can change the world into a
better place for all life.

THAT TO THIS END WE HEREBY DECLARE ourselves absolutely free and
independent of all past political connections. We will give our
suffrage only to such men and women for office as we have good reason
will use their best endeavors to the promotion of these ends, and for
the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on Divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes
and our sacred honor.

[This Declaration is derived from the works of Thomas
Jefferson, Cornel West, A.C. Townley, Lawrence Goodwyn, J. Glenn
Evans and all those populists who have believed and sought to promote
the democratic ideal. Final draft composed and written by A.V. Krebs,
publisher of the online newsletter, The Agribusiness Examiner, email
avkrebs@comcast.net. He is author of The Corporate Reapers: The Book
of Agribusiness.]